CalBusiness

Summer 2005

In Brief

Haas Alumnus Gives $25 Million for Executive Education Building

An anonymous donor will provide $25 million toward a new executive education building for the Haas School of Business, Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau announced in August. The proposed facility will create needed space for teaching and on-site accommodations for executives attending Haas School programs.

The generous gift was made possible by an alumnus of the Haas School who chooses to remain anonymous at this time.

This gift is the largest single gift ever received by the Haas School in its 107-year history. It is also among the largest single donations received by UC Berkeley, according to Donald McQuade, Vice Chancellor of University Relations.

The new teaching and short-term housing facility is part of a strategy to expand the programs of the Center for Executive Development at the Haas School, which provides senior business executives from around the world with leading-edge, non-degree management education. The increased revenue from the executive education programs will help the Haas School support its other academic programs and enable it to achieve its goal of financial sustainability.

The facility is in the early planning stages, and its size and location have not yet been determined. The facility will be in addition to the recently announced plans to build a new academic building serving the campus's School of Law (Boalt Hall) and Haas School of Business across the street from the Memorial Stadium between the law and business schools.

"This extraordinary gift will enable the Haas School to achieve its goal of being one of the top business schools in the world by reaching out to the business community with first-class management education for executives," said Chancellor Birgeneau. "We are grateful to this loyal alumnus and generous donor to Cal over the years, who wishes to remain anonymous."

"This gift marks a major turning point in the school's history, and we look forward to all the opportunities that it creates," said Haas School Dean (acting) Richard Lyons. "The new facility will increase our capacity to develop corporate partnerships in a way that we have not had before. These partnerships are crucial to the school's preeminence."

Whitney Hischier, director of the Center for Executive Development and assistant dean at the Haas School, said the new teaching and residential facility will help attract top corporate leaders from around the globe to the school's executive learning programs. "This new facility will clearly help us to grow our program significantly, and take advantage of the attractiveness of UC Berkeley and the Bay Area among top executives, who will be eager to visit and attend innovative learning programs."

The Center for Executive Development draws on the rich resources, talent, and perspectives of world-class business educators and researchers from the Haas School to provide top-level non-degree executive education courses and custom programs to executives and companies around the world. Among its cutting-edge offerings are the Institute for Chief Information Officers, which is designed for future information technology leaders who have been targeted to assume significant management responsibilities, and the global BioExecutive Program, which delivers in-depth advanced knowledge and insights into emerging industry trends. Programs typically run from one day to several weeks in length.

Revenue from executive programs will help to support the Haas School's academic degree programs for undergraduate and graduate students, and enable the school to continue attracting the best faculty members.

The new executive education building will include state-of-the-art, high-tech classrooms, as well as first-class residential space that will permit executive education participants to live and study on the premises while attending a program. Offices for the Haas School's Center for Executive Development will also be located in the building.